Ginger Nuts

The Ginger Nut – or ginger snap – is a universally popular biscuit first produced in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century. One of the hardest biscuits on the market, Ginger Nuts are renowned for being superb “dunkers” capable of withstanding even the hottest of tea. However, not only are these wonderful biscuits hardy in texture, they also have an incredibly robust flavour. It’s hard to be left wanting when someone cracks the Ginger Nuts out.

If you’ve ever tried to bake your own Ginger Nuts you’ll soon have realised that there is a seemingly unlimited number of recipes for them out there. What I’ve tried to pull together here is a combination of a number of ideas into what I consider to be the best recipe available.

First and foremost, these biscuits need to be hard… really hard. As such, it’s really important to move as far away from ‘cake’ as is reasonably possible – that means no egg, not even a little bit. Secondly, they – unsurprisingly – need to pack a bit of a punch, so don’t go easy on the ground ginger. In my opinion, ginger always pairs extremely well with the dark richness of black treacle (molasses), so I’ve replaced half of the usual golden syrup with a tablespoon of that.

Happily, though Ginger Nuts are somewhat unrelenting in their outcome, they are supremely simple to make. Indeed, there is little time involved and you could easily produce and be eating this entire batch in under an hour. It is also a “one-pot bake” with everything mixed in a saucepan before being transferred to a baking tray. So, if you’re in the market for a simple, flavoursome and supremely “dunkable” biscuit you’ve certainly come to the right place.

If you’re looking for something similar, but in cupcake form, check out my recipe for Gingerbread Latte Cupcakes – they are fantastic at this time of year.

Ginger Nuts

Makes 15

Ingredients:

• 50g butter, salted

• 50g light muscovado sugar

• 1 tbsp (25g) black treacle (molasses)

• 1 tbsp (25g) golden syrup

• 120g plain flour

• 1 tsp ground ginger

• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C (fan) and line a baking tray. Gently melt the butter in a saucepan, remove from the heat and stir in the sugar, treacle and syrup. Once mixed, sift in the flour, ginger and bicarb and combine until smooth.

2. Transfer the mixture in balls of 20g (around 1 tsp) to the baking tray leaving 5cm between each. Bake in the middle of the oven for 15-20 minutes until cracked and dark brown. Once cooked set aside for 5 minutes to harden before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cost: Ingredients like the ones featured in this recipe never cost very much money. As such, it is a great idea to invest a little in the butter you use – good butter can make a HUGE difference. Even so, this relatively large batch of biscuits should set you back no more than £1.10.

These are my dad’s FAVORITE cookies! Do doesn’t like soft cookies — he’ll microwave cookies to make them harder if he can. Thanks for the amazing recipe! Now he won’t have to go to extreme measures for a delicious cookie. 😉

Love me a good ginger cookie! In fact, I just took a tray of gingersnaps out of the oven. It’s my lucky day — I found a bag of dough balls hidden in my freezer, so all I had to do was bake them, and I found your recipe, which sounds great!

Fantastic post Nick. My eldest and I made flapjacks the other evening. I brought them into work for my colleagues. She flayed me, when I got home, for not keeping any for her. I think I might buy my way out of trouble with these.

I whole heartedly agree that investing in butter is well worth it. Not to mention that margarine is not a natural product and has a completely different composition than that of butter. I’m told that margarine has much more water which will also affect a recipe, particularly in baking.
I have a dinner party to go to on Friday, I’m making this simple yet gorgeous cookie today for sure!

These ginger nuts look fantastic.There’s just something about that deep, dark, and sometimes mysterious molasses in gingersnaps that keeps me coming back for more (also probably the spicy ginger). I don’t think I’ll be able to make any less than 5 batches of ginger snaps, gingerbread, etc. this holiday season!

Thanks for this simply illustrated recipe. Just made this this evening. Turned out really well and I am not the best cookie maker around. I did find I needed about 20% more butter for them to spread (I used a lovely sea salted variety) and because I love dark and grounding spice taste, I added way more molasses ; ) and less than a dash of cloves.

Dear Nick, I have made your Gingernuts biscuits and already shared m thought on how incredible they were on twitter with you. I want to nominate your Blog for One Lovely Blog Award because I think you are an inspiration to us all and I love reading your posts and copying your recipes!http://noemieskitchen.com/2014/09/23/one-lovely-blog-award/

Hi there recently moved from UK to NZ everything so expensive so making so much of my own bread, cake & now biscuits! Used maple syrup ( had no molasses) & some coconut sugar as part of the sugar content, simply beautiful. Thank you 🙂 My husband has fallen in love with me all over again.